Agricultural feed bagging machines have been employed for several years to pack or bag silage or the like into elongated plastic bags. In recent years, the bagging machines have also been used to pack or bag compost material and grain into the elongated plastic bags. Two of the earliest bagging machines are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,687,061 and 4,046,068, the complete disclosures of which are incorporated herein by reference for all purposes. In these bagging machines, silage or the like is supplied to the forward or intake end of the bagging machine and is fed to a rotor or other compression means, which conveys the silage into a tunnel on which the bag is positioned so that the bag is filled. The bagging machine moves forward at a controlled rate leaving the packed bag behind. The packing density of the material packed in the bag is determined and controlled by a number of factors including the rate at which the bagging machine moves forward and the rate at which the silage material is packed into the bag.
Over the past several years, bagging machines and their associated tunnels have dramatically increased in size to accommodate end-users' desire to use larger bags. Tunnels for use with the bagging machines are available in a variety of widths, some of which are sufficiently large to accommodate bags having a 12-foot diameter. The large width of the tunnel presents a problem when the bagging machine is being transported on public roads, which normally limit those widths to approximately 102 inches (8.5 feet). Such width restrictions greatly reduce the mobility of machines with larger tunnels. The large width of the tunnel also presents a problem when the machines and tunnels are being shipped, especially overseas.
Another drawback with many conventional bagging machines is that they can only be used with bags of a single width. That is, conventional bagging machines can be used with bags of varying length, sometimes up to several hundred feet long. However, a bagging machine and associated tunnel typically can only be used with bags of a single width, such as 8 feet, 10 feet, 12 feet, or a predetermined width therebetween. Bagging machines, whether used to bag feed, compost, or other material, can be used in a variety of circumstances and to serve multiple end-users. A particular farm may need to bag different types of silage in different size bags. The same farmer may also want to compost material in yet another size bag. Using conventional bagging technology, a separate machine, or at least separate tunnels, would be required for each such use, the cost of which would be prohibitive.